According to multi-database search site Invisible Web, there are over 10,000 search engines available to the current 452,355,932 million Internet users. Even if an adult webmaster managed to hand-submit their site to all the SE on today’s list, that list would be lengthened tomorrow. Almost as many websites exist as do people on the earth. The net is a big, damned place.

"It [auto-submit software] can save time, but it's far from perfect and is only as good as it's user."

Search engines are the travel maps of cyberspace and getting your website on as many of these virtual maps as you can is only good for your adult business. Submitting a site to a Search Engine does not guarantee placement within their database, but it's better than not submitting.

The dilemma for the adult webmaster is the finite amount of hours in a day. One human could spend a couple of weeks hand-submitting a site to a long list of engines or directories and still not have covered all the SE's.

As soon as ARPANET was changed into the World Wide Web, pages began to procreate like bunnies. The graphics-enabled browser and the simplicity of HTML only fueled the website population explosion. A college student got tired of writing URLs on little slips of paper to keep track of his favorite pages and built the first Internet search engine: ARCHIE. Not long after that, some clever programmer invented the first auto-submitter.

Auto-submission programs do what their name implies. They automatically submit a website to the proper form pages of many Internet databases. A search engine auto-submission program saves a webmaster heaping loads of time. Auto-submit programs know the URLs of SE's submit pages. Auto-submits let you insert contact information, keywords and your site's Internet address into the program's wizard. The program then connects to the pages of the SEs, pastes all the pre-entered text into the proper fields and clicks each, little submit button.

The more features the auto-submitter has, the better. This software can be freeware, shareware or pay. It can submit to as little as twenty engines or it can submit to hundreds. It can delineate which category to submit your site to. It can even save your submission results and allow you to check on your site's future ranking popularity. Auto-submission software seems like a godsend to the busy, ever-building adult webmaster.

The question that has to be asked is will you benefit from the results of auto-submitter use? Will search engines list you? Will they list you higher? Many Thumbnail Gallery Posts and top lists forbid auto-submission software to be used in their forms. Would this not also be true of search engines and directories? Search directories like DMOZ have human editors who look through webmaster submissions manually.

On the whole, search directories care about the relativity of a submission to its category. Search engines and spider programs let software analyze submissions. This software can sometimes see an auto-submitted URL as spam. It's hard to know which engines use such software as there are so many and they're all different. Even if they spider bots don't see the submission as spam, the submission software may be unable to correctly fill out the various form fields on the assorted submit pages.

This can result in one's site being sent directly to a spider's delete bin. Some bots put a limit on keywords allowed in META TAGS and that might conflict with the keyword suggestions of your auto-submit wizard.

The realization is that auto-submit software is not quite the godsend it's made out to be. It can save time, but it's far from perfect and is only as good as it's user. Even with the maximum possible bells and whistles, auto submitters can only do so much. Search directories especially, have very specific categories and if a site is not submitted to the correct one, it can be deleted. Auto programs submit to generalized categories. Search engines use robot software that can see an auto-submit as spam.

This doesn't mean one shouldn't use an auto-submitter, it just means one should use it with caution.

Hand-submitting sites is still the best way to get you site indexed and mapped on the Internet. My advice is to find a happy medium: Hand-submit to the SEs you find most important to your traffic. While there are thousands of databases out there, there are still a handful of search engines that the majority uses. Yahoo may use strong-arm tactics and charge ridiculous fees for unguaranteed results, but they are not the only SE that counts. More people open their connections every day to the homepage of AOL than do those that visit Yahoo. AOL uses the database of DMOZ as their search base. Get your site listed on DMOZ and eventually, you will reach the people.

Concentrate on getting listed with the SEs that count. Save the auto-submitter for the other nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety five search engines.